The Garden Where Augustine Finally Listened

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden. Augustine of Hippo had spent years hearing the voice of God and refusing to yield. His mother Monica had prayed. Bishop Ambrose had preached. Augustine himself had read the Scriptures and felt their pull. Yet each time conviction stirred, he hardened his resolve. "Not yet," he famously prayed. "Grant me chastity and self-control — but not yet."

That afternoon, something broke. Through his tears, Augustine heard a child's voice from a neighboring house chanting, Tolle lege — "Take up and read." He opened the apostle Paul's letter to the Romans and read the first passage his eyes fell upon. The words pierced through every layer of resistance he had built over thirteen years of running.

Augustine stopped running. He bowed. He worshipped.

Psalm 95 carries the same urgent plea: "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts." The psalmist knew that an entire generation wandered forty years in the wilderness because they heard God speak and chose to stiffen their necks instead of bend their knees. The danger was never that God would stop speaking. The danger was that they would stop listening.

The Almighty is still speaking today. The only question is whether we will do what Augustine finally did in that garden — stop saying "not yet" and fall to our knees before the Lord our Maker.